US Military Becoming a Leading User of Green Technology

I found this article on CNN and it is very interesting and makes a lot of sense. The short story is that a lot of the attacks that the USA military faces is on oil convoys. The reason for this is that most of the bases in the theater of way are being run off generators so they are constantly needing oil deliveries all over Iraq and Afghanistan. This has led to a high percentage of fatalities guarding these convoys. This has led to the USA military paying about $40 a gallon for fuel. This explains why the USA military is investing in some green technologies to power their forward bases.

Because the military is paying such a high amount for fuel alternative energy sources are often times more cost effective. This greatly helps in developing new technologies and spurs development of products for a military environment. With the military investing heavily in these technologies it helps further drive costs down as new techniques can help with consumer products. Similar to how the military helped in the development of GPS and the internet.

The military has been using lots of cool green technologies to provide portable power. One was solar panels that can be rolled up and stuffed into the backpacks. The Marines are looking at trailer mounted solar panels with very high efficiency. The Army hopes to reduce its oil energy dependency by 25% by 2025 and the Marines hope to reduce theirs by 50% during the same time. This is even having a trickledown effect on the soldiers. After seeing the bloodshed over oil in the Middle East some have come to the conclusion that going green once home is also important.

One Army medic returning from Iraq recently switched his home to solar power. He said the amount of fuel he saw the U.S. military consume in Iraq was a driving factor.0:00 / 2:06 Iraq War made me switch to solar

"It would be naive to think that some of the money we spend doesn't find its way into the bad guys' hands," said Patrick Padilla, who saw heavy fighting in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006. "If I can do my part to cut that down a little bit, then that's hopefully one less person getting shot at, like I had to go through."

I for one find this as a slight ironic twist that in the war in Iraq over oil may ultimately help us kick our addiction to it.